


The Unfortunate Adventures of Angus McDonald

by miceenscene



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: A series of unfortunate events - Freeform, Angus's backstory, Gen, Neglect, this is what happens when I watch netflix and listen to podcasts at the same time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 05:24:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9864848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miceenscene/pseuds/miceenscene
Summary: If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.





	

      The story you are about the read is not a happy one. Indeed very little of Angus McDonald’s young life is what most people would deem ‘happy’. I tell you this not to make you feel sorry for little Angus, but as a way to prepare you for what will soon follow. Though this is not to say that all of his life has been despair, desperation, and death. Only most of it.

      The very beginning of Angus’s life was happy, but of course that was before Angus could remember. He had two parents, as most children do, and his parents loved each other very much, as only some children’s parents do. The birth of Angus was a joyous occasion in their modest home in Neverwinter - the word “modest” here meaning “not excessively large” or “elaborate” - and for a time the McDonald household was very happy.

      As a baby, Angus looked like most other babies his age. He was smaller than a camel but larger than a mouse. From birth he had a fluffy shock of dark hair that would get into his face if it wasn’t cut often enough. He had wide eyes that he would use to keenly observe the world, or at least observe his mother as she puttered about the garden and home. When he grew a little older, he would crawl behind her and he formed an unfortunate habit of getting underfoot. (A habit that continues to this day.) I call it an unfortunate habit because he would occasionally be tripped over and, being a baby, he would cry about it. His parents were quick to soothe him and kiss any boo-boos that he may have incurred. At night, his mother would hold him as she rocked in the rocking chair and his father would read aloud stories, even though Angus was far too young to understand what a murder was or why the alley symbolized the author’s emptiness. 

      If Angus could remember these times, remember the sound of his father’s laugh or the sight of his mother planting tulips in the front garden, I’m sure he would take comfort in them. But all of this passed, as did his parents, well before Angus could remember anything. Looking back, Angus would often wonder if it was better that he couldn’t remember them. But I can assure you that it is no easier to be missing someone that you never knew.

      The extended clan of the McDonalds were rightfully shocked at the untimely passing of these two, until then, hale and hearty members of their family.

      “What a horribly tragic thing to happen.” said one aunt.

      “The poor dears.” a cousin sighed.

      “We demand justice! My taxes pay your salary, are you just sitting about all day?” cried another uncle.

      “I’m sorry, but we are doing all we can.” replied the detective. He was an old elf with stooping shoulders and eyes that made you tired to just look at them. “We will inform you with updates as the investigation progresses. But right now, someone has to take custody of the child.”

      Like the good people they were, none of them expressly said no. For that would make them not good people. But neither did any of them volunteer to take on raising baby Angus. They all looked sideways at each other, shuffled feet and mumbled excuses of unwilling spouses and not enough bedrooms. Eventually it was decided amongst the group of adults that one of the great-great aunts, who was not present for this decision, should take Angus into her house. After all, Aunt Carla had had no children and, being an old lady, nothing better to do with her time than to raise a small child.

      Now I’m sure at some point in your life you have seen a house like Aunt Carla’s. Maybe it was around the corner from your school, or at the end of the cul-de-sac on your friend’s street. It’s the kind of house that everyone, even grown adults who logically knew better, would walk by a little quicker so as to not linger in front of the house. The front porch always seems to sag and there’s always a bed of dying day lilies that you never saw bloom. Maybe a stack of unopened newspapers and a mean dog if the owner was especially committed to their house’s role on the block. But more important than all of the meer aesthetics of the place is the feeling it must give you in the pit of your stomach.

      When the detective arrived with baby Angus, he had that feeling in the pit of his stomach. But as he was a busy detective with a double-murder to solve and it was the wishes of the family, he ignored the feeling. Or that’s what he assured himself as he left Angus in the care of Carla McDonald. Agnus showed off his newest trick of being able to wave ‘bye-bye’ by opening and closing his fist several times for the detective. Little did either of them know, but that gesture would save Angus’ life.

      Had Carla McDonald just been a few years younger, the story of Angus’s life would have turned out much differently. As would the story of many other people’s lives for everyone’s life affects others in ways we will never know and could never even begin to understand. But Carla McDonald was not a young woman, she squinted at everything and walked like molasses being poured through an hourglass. She also had a terrible habit of licking her lips when people would speak to her. A truly, truly terrible habit. Her home was dingy and dark, filled with relics from a life she no longer lived. There was a lingering smell of cats even though she had not had a cat for nearly the past decade. But for all her crotchety-ness and grouchiness and general unpleasantness, this must be said about Carla: she tried. 

      She taught Angus the fundamentals of life. All the important things that we forget we know, but if we actually forgot would be catastrophic. Things like how to hold a spoon, use a chair, apply ointment to arthritic joints, and take turns. Angus learned to speak, to walk, to tell when Miss Carla was losing patience, and to not talk when Miss Carla was taking a nap. Angus’s earliest memories, the ones that seem more like a dream than reality, were of trying to sneak out to the back garden while Carla was sleeping. She wasn’t one for fanciful stories or much physical affection, so compared to his previous life it was a lonely time for Angus. However, compared to his future life it was a warm and welcoming home.

      It’s amazing how early the seeds of personality begin to bloom in humans. Even though he was so young, Angus exhibited enormous curiosity for the world. If there was a stack of papers, he would need to look at every individual paper in the stack. He would babble on for hours to himself, playing make-believe with toys fashioned from sticks and potholders. Even at such a young age, he enjoyed solving puzzles. Though the puzzle was usually Where Did Miss Carla’s Glasses Go Off To This Time. Miss Carla spent most of the two years that Angus lived with her trying to keep him at arm’s length, emotionally speaking. But Angus was already one of those people that you find yourself liking despite all best efforts to despise them. 

      In one of their last days together, Carla stumbled out of that accidental sleep that old people sometimes find themselves in. And curled up next to her like a cat was Angus, fast asleep with his head on her lap. She watched his small chest rise and fall with each deep breath, and realized, begrudgingly, that somehow she had come to ...appreciate his presence. She reached over and pulled a unraveling afghan up to his shoulder. Pausing, then gently running her fingers over the curls of his hair. She settled back into her seat and drifted off again, a slight smile on her lips.

      The next week had one of those days in early spring when the weather spontaneously decides that it’s spring today. Everyone opens their windows for the first time in months, and the scent of life fills the air. Angus had been on his own the whole morning and it was unusual for Miss Carla to not be awake. Luckily, Angus had found some crackers that had been left out from the day before, and he was quite content to look through one of the taller stacks of paper in the living room. He couldn’t read yet, but he felt certain that if he stared for long enough at each page it would be entertaining enough. He stopped when a knock sounded on the door; Miss Carla couldn’t get to the door fast enough so it was often his job to answer it. Though he still had to stand on his tippy-toes to reach for the knob to pull it open. It was one of Miss Carla’s neighbors, one who fancied herself personable but was more nosy than anything else.

      “Well, hello there, mister Angus!” she said in that high-pitched voice adults use when they don’t actually know how to talk to children. “Is your Auntie Carla here?”

      “Mizcarla go sleep.” Angus replied, matter of factly.

      “Oh well, I won’t be but a minute.” the neighbor smiled saccharinely and stepped around Agnus, heading for the back rooms. Angus knew that Miss Carla wouldn’t like it if the neighbor woke her up, but he also knew that this neighbor wouldn’t listen to him. So he returned to the page that he had been looking at, it was a full page glossy advertisement for a traveling cooking show and was very interesting to study. 

      Suddenly the neighbor returned from the back rooms and she ran out of the house. Angus watched her go and wondered why she had left in such a hurry. Usually she would stay much longer than anyone wanted her to. Feeling curious, he stood up and toddled to the back bedroom where Miss Carla slept. She was in her bed, and seemed to be asleep, as she had been all morning. She certainly wasn’t moving at all, not that she moved much to begin with. Angus looked closely at her face, something didn’t seem quite right though he didn’t understand what. 

      “Oh, good gods.” A voice said behind him. The neighbor had returned with several other neighbors in tow. She scooped up Angus and took him out of the room, Angus twisted around to see several of the other neighbors approach Miss Carla’s sleeping form. The neighbor took Angus out to the front porch and they sat in one of the chairs, holding him in her lap and running a shaking hand over his hair. 

      Angus couldn’t understand why neighbors and important looking people in uniforms kept coming into and out of the house the whole afternoon. The neighbor tried to cover Angus’ face when a couple of the men carried out some sort of supine - a word which here means “lying face upward” - figure in a white sheet, but he wiggled enough to see around her fingers and watch the men carry away the bundle down the street towards town. The neighbor stayed with Angus that night, and, frustratingly so, she wouldn’t answer any of his questions about where Miss Carla was, or what had been in the sheet, or why everyone was acting so strange. He went to sleep that night hoping that Miss Carla would be back in the morning.

      After the death of Carla, the members of the McDonald clan were once again summoned to decide what to do with Angus.

      “Taking care of the boy was too much for her.” said one aunt.

      “The dear old woman.” a cousin sighed.

      “It was a poor decision to send such a taxing child to such an infirmed woman!” cried another uncle. 

      They all heartily agreed. And while everyone of them had assured themselves enough to not feel any guilt over the matter, the question still hung in the air like a thick curtain.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone, Thanks so much for reading this fic. It's a very different style than I usually write, so it's been really fun to explore. If you liked it, let me know by leaving some kudos or a comment below. Or if there's something you didn't like/wish were better, feel free to let your opinions be known. I always love hearing from you guys. Thanks!
> 
>  
> 
> UPDATE 3.9.17: Sorry guys, this fic has been put on hiatus for the time being. I'm working on a different project with a friend and that's kinda absorbed all my free time. BUT it is a fic, and it is TAZ, so that'll be coming to you here in a few weeks. I'll return to Angus after that, I promise. :)


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